Vassa in the Night (30 page)

Once we're already high up it occurs to me to make sure he's observing his
basic shopping precautions,
and in fact he's wearing his jacket with the stitched-shut pockets, bright pink zigzags crudely galloping across gray canvas. The pink is so lurid that it leaves trails of green lightning inside my eyes. Perfect. As far as I know Sinister is busy throttling Erg and Dexter's come around to seeing things more my way, and he's too sick to cause much trouble anyhow. But I can't count on that.

I can't count on anything. Not here.

Tomin's eyes search the store. “So, do you have any ideas at all about where your friend could be?” Something occurs to him. “You said not human. Are we talking humanoid, at least?”

It feels like an intrusion on Erg's privacy to tell him anything at all—but the fact is he won't be much help if he has no clue what to look for.

“She's a lot smaller. Um, the last time I saw her, Babs had her stuffed in a jar. She probably has a guard with her, too. Otherwise I'm pretty sure she could get away by herself. Like, one of my coworkers is watching her? That almost got Lottery?” It's funny, but I feel a kind of inner prohibition, a resistance, to coming out and explaining about the hands; there's a weird sense in my chest that there are things we just don't
talk
about. Is this how it feels for Erg? I consider the problem for another long moment. “The obvious thing would be for Babs to keep my friend somewhere in her apartment. But Babs is not the type to do the obvious thing. She'll want to mess with me more than that. You know, I'd bet Babs hid her somewhere right in the store, like on one of the shelves somewhere.”

Tomin kind of drapes back against the display of laundry detergent, arms crossed. He has beautiful fluid posture, but ripples of uncertainty pass over his face as he struggles to take in what must feel like a surfeit of impossibilities. “Your friend. And a guard. Both in a jar.”

“See why I'm telling you to leave? Think how much better you'll feel if you decide that I'm just a psycho and get lost. Go play some video games. Doesn't that sound awesome?”

“And then in a few days I'll hear from Lottery that you're dead, and we'll celebrate by ordering pizza?”

“You guys clink slices. A toast to getting rid of me and Joel. Seriously, we'll be honored.” I thought I was kidding, but there's an appreciable bite to my tone.

Tomin responds to that by crossing the narrow span of emptiness between us and hugging me. I'm too startled to react at first, and by the time I start considering whether or not I want to hug him back he's already letting go. “I think I'd rather get pizza with you. I'm weird that way.”

I pause, wondering how I should respond. Over the wafting piano music I hear a small noise I can't identify, a tiny
pop.
It's very close. “We need to be careful. I just heard something. If we're doing this, we should get started.”

I guess that constitutes changing the subject, the way Erg always does, but luckily Tomin accepts it a lot more gracefully than I usually do. He watches me curiously, suppressed questions bubbling just below the surface, then nods.

“Start looking through everything on the shelves? I can do that. It's going to take forever, though. And it's not nearly as intense as what I was expecting. I thought we'd go about this more efficiently, like infiltrate somewhere, or maybe slay some stuff.” He smiles archly and swings an imaginary sword at the air. Hopefully he's being ironic.

“I've seen enough slaying to last me a while. But thanks for the suggestion.” I think of telling him to search quietly, but the fact is that if Sinister's lurking nearby he must have heard the whole conversation, maybe while tightening his squeeze on Erg's neck. Taking Sinister by surprise is probably out of the question. Even if we find them, what do we do then?

And then on a low shelf under the detergent I notice bottles of Drano next to packages of rubber gloves. I don't imagine Erg will be a big fan of getting doused in some nasty corrosive chemical like that, but that stuff will do way more of a number on skin than it will on wood.

I open a pair of gloves and snap them on, then hoist the Drano. “If you find anything … really weird-looking, don't touch it. Just call me right away. Okay?”

Tomin looks shocked. “You're going to use that as a
weapon
?”

“If I have to. Sure. Great for slaying!”

“Oh,” Tomin says, a shade too wildly, “so slaying is okay for
you.
”

I don't try to answer that, because there's another small popping sound. One rule of thumb I have for BY's: if you don't know what something is, then it's no good. “I think we should move. Tomin,
please
try to be careful.” Another tiny snap; if I didn't know that plinking song so well by now, I might think it was part of the music. I grab him by the shoulders and tug him away from the display. “It's time to take your shopping precautions to the next level. Go
advanced.
I'm not kidding.”

The store starts dancing more briskly, with simulated cheery enthusiasm, like it wants to keep us distracted and wobbling. Tomin pitches sideways. Under the loud slap of his foot as he catches his balance, I almost think I hear the pop again. A few pops, actually, like the patter of a miniscule machine gun. It makes no sense at all.

“Vassa? I don't know why, but I have this feeling that it has to be tonight. That it's our one chance if we're ever going to stop what's happening here. Is that crazy?”

I don't answer and he sits down to start peering along the lowest shelves, moving jars and boxes around to check the things in back. For another long moment I just watch him, waiting to catch a glimpse of something suspicious, but everything looks fine.

Which just makes me feel worse, but I start searching anyway. I still have that intuition—
Erg is right here
—like a knife piercing tiny slits in my heart. Is it possible that after all our years together I can sense her? I look first at every jar I can find, hoping for that same mostly empty container of strawberry marshmallow butter, but as far as I can tell they're all undisturbed. Babs might have moved her into something else, and I listen as intensely as I can for the faint, muffled cry of a tiny mouth.

Tomin moves into the next aisle where I can't see him. “Hey,” I call. “We should really stay together.”

“No time for that,” Tomin calls back. The store pitches so hard that the shelves creak, then flings itself in a delirious pirouette, gives a rapid shake, and spins again. It appears to be in an exuberant mood this evening, and my head starts to swim a little. Glowing dots and filaments dance across my vision: green lightning, pink snakes. “We have to work fast, I can feel it. Hey, Vassa? It wasn't completely true. I mean that Joel was my only reason for coming here tonight. I didn't want you to be stuck facing this on your own.”

I can't focus on that now. My dizziness subsides, but the yellow floor glares so fiercely that looking at it isn't much of an improvement. I feel ill. The colors of the packages must have seared my retinas a little, because I'm still seeing things: floating green dots and what looks like a bright pink squiggle on that immaculate linoleum. The dots drift, but the squiggle stays dead still.

A single loose strand, like a thread.

Then I get it. “Tomin!” I scream. “Tomin, watch your pockets!” And at the same moment I hear him yell. There's a violent slapping sound followed by a rumble of falling objects. I dart around the corner, the store's sway throwing me against the shelves as I reach his aisle, and see Tomin grabbing fistfuls of candy bars, popsicles, toothpaste, yanking them out of his wide-open pockets and flinging them on the floor. The hem of his jacket bulges strangely, and more small objects keep spewing up through his pockets like lava. Foil gleaming and rustling, colored indigo and chartreuse and awful biting-bright scarlet. He's stopped yanking out objects to smack at something, and then I see it: a skittering lump like an obese spider stretches the fabric of his jacket. From the inside.

It must be Sinister. He's wormed his way between the gray canvas and the lining—and the jacket's whole bottom is distended with stolen goods. Popping them out through the pockets is just a tease, because no matter how many Tomin hurls away he'll still be sagging with them.

I shove the Drano onto the nearest shelf and throw myself at him, grabbing his jacket by the collar to drag it off. The whole store leaps and bucks, trying to dislodge me, but after an instant's confusion Tomin understands and starts twisting, too, managing to jerk one arm out. His breath is hot on my ear and his broad chest radiates warmth as I struggle to free him from that fatal gray tangle. I can see Sinister wriggling inside the quilted lining. Panic makes us clumsy, and the store swings violently back and forth so that my shoulders slam into the metal shelves on one side and then on the other. All I can think about is ripping that jacket free, running to the door and dropping it into the parking lot … and if Sinister dies from the fall, that would be fine, too.

I'm almost there, still wrestling with the jacket whenever I'm able to stand upright for a moment. It's off now except for the left cuff. I tug but it's caught on his wrist somehow, and he yelps as I yank harder.

Then Babs is five feet away, smiling a horrible pinched smile. “And do you think this is appropriate behavior during working hours, my imp? To be getting yourself in a pleasant tussle with a young man of such dubious character? An unrepentant thief, by the look of things?”

I haul back, irrationally hoping I can save him—though any idiot could see that it's too late—and his jacket rips wide at the bottom. A clutter of nasty junk foods and starry foil-wrapped soaps avalanches down, Sinister flopping on top of it all. He hops on his wrist-stump and jiggles a triumphant forefinger my way:
Got you.

King of the goddamn mountain.

A grayish-mauve slug, squirming with self-satisfaction.

I will wait for my chance, and I will kill him.

If Sinister is here, then where is Erg? Is she unguarded? Quick and stealthy as she is, can't she get away?

Tomin looks from me, to Babs, to the hand on the floor. “Ugh. Oh, God, is that foul! Look, you can see that I didn't have anything to do with this, right?” He shoots Babs a look of appeal, smiling sweetly at her. She doesn't smile back.

“He thinks I'm a fool for the pretty face, doesn't he, imp?” Babs says, looking fixedly at me. “Poor old woman that I am, with no livelihood but my store, he thinks he can bury me alive in his smiles and I won't lift a hand in my own defense? Ah, wicked boy,” she addresses Tomin. “You could at least say you're sorry. A last little glimmer of repentance before you go, wouldn't that make it so much nicer? For you and for me. And for your sweet amour here. She'd have the peace of knowing that you'd made things right before you died.”

Tomin's head jerks back. I was so busy looking at Babs that I didn't see Sinister creeping up the shelves behind him, but now those dead fingers are twined in Tomin's tousled dark hair, dragging hard so that his golden brown throat bows forward like the sail of a ship. He still can't believe what's happening, but sparks of terror begin to dart through his green-gray eyes. “
Vassa,
” he says, and his voice is soft—though I deserve fury for getting him into this.

“Babs,” I say; I won't mention
right
or
wrong
this time, since those clearly aren't details that interest her. “Babs, if you do this, I will take you down.” The weird thing is how certain I sound, how utterly confident—though the logic of the situation suggests that if anybody's going down, it will be me. “I used to feel sorry for you, can you believe it? But that won't stop me if you hurt him. I will undo you.”

Babs's diseased eye bobs around me as I speak, a startled will-o'-the-wisp. She's too shocked to reply for a moment, her mouth chewing on empty air, but then she manages it. “Why, impling, what a childish declaration it is! And have you forgotten so soon that I have a guarantee of your good behavior?”

“I remember.”

She gives me a slow once-over, her eye rolling along the neon green rubber gloves, then taking in my missing jacket. I'm left with just my black hoodie over an olive tank top. “I'm pleased that your recollection is improving. Try to remember how many times you've lost already, my imp. Count those occasions up on your dainty fingers. Perhaps you'll be able to deduce from that how very much loss you have yet to endure.”

“I've lost some,” I admit, and that uncanny confidence still controls my voice. It's like I'm possessed, but I've got no idea by what. “But I've won some, too, Babs. Maybe I'd rather draw my conclusions from that.”

Babs snorts. “Not on your own, you haven't. And your little helper is well and thoroughly neutralized. Dexter!”

“Vassa,” Tomin says. “This is not your fault. Always remember that, okay? You warned me over and over. It's not your fault that I did this anyway. I did exactly what I wanted to do.”

That's just more kindness than I know how to deal with. I ignore Babs and step over to him, wrap my arms around him, and kiss the throat that they're about to sever. I have a hazy idea that Babs doesn't actually want me dead at the moment—not until she's hurt me more—and I get this delusion that if I just cling tightly enough they won't do it.

“Dexter!” Babs hollers again. I hear a scraping sound and look to see him coming, dragging the axe along the floor. He's not well—his thumb is still inflamed and the bite is still raw-looking and ragged—but he's obviously much, much better.

“He was so sick!” The words slip out.

“Ah,” Babs says. “But I took your wise advice, my imp. I soaked him in a medicinal soup, and just see how he's perked up!”